of the time when the only rare specimens would be found in the
glass cases of the museums, ending his talk with a graphic description
of the great wooden platters of boiling-hot terrapin which were served
to passengers crossing to Norfolk in the old days. The servants would
split off the hot shell--this was turned top side down, used as a dish
and filled with butter, pepper and salt, into which toothsome bits of
the reptile, torn out by the guests' forks, were dipped before being
eaten.

The talk now caromed from birds, reptiles and fish to guns and tackles,
and then to the sportsmen who used them, and then to the millionaires
who owned the largest shares in the ducking clubs, and so on to the
stock of the same, and finally to the one subject of the evening--the
one uppermost in everybody's thoughts which so far had not been touched
upon--the Mukton Lode. There was no question about the proper mechanism
of the traps--the directors were attending to that; the quality of the
bait, too, seemed all that could be desired--that was Breen's part. How
many mice were nosing about was the question, and of the number how many
would be inside when the spring snapped?

The Colonel, after a nod of his head and a reassuring glance from his
host, took full charge of the field, soaring away with minute accounts
of the last inspection of the mine. He told how the "tailings" at Mukton
City had panned out 30 per cent, to the ton--with two hundred thousand
tons in the dump thrown away until the new smelter was started and they
could get rid of the sulphides; of what Aetna Cobb's Crest had done
and Beals Hollow and Morgan Creek--all on the same ridge, and was about
launching out on the future value of Mukton Lode when Mason broke the
silence by asking if any one present had heard of a mine somewhere in
Nevada which an Englishman had bought and which had panned out $1,200 to
the ton the first week and not a cent to the square mile ever afterward?
The Chicago man was the most important mouse of the lot, and the tone of
his voice and his way of speaking seemed fraught with a purpose.

Breen leaned forward in rapt attention, and even Hodges and Portman
(both of them were loaded to the scuppers with Mukton) stopped talking.

"Slickest game I ever heard of," continued Mason. "Two men came into
town--two poor prospectors, remember--ran across the Englishman at the
hotel--told the story of their claim: 'Take it or leave it after you
look it over